External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
The new model is up to twice as successful at some tasks.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
Huang faces a board probe as investors fret over Nvidia’s lack of a clear successor.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
The shape looks like a Saab Aero-X, but the nose previews the next Polestar 2.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
Ukraine competes with Russia and data centers for China’s optical fiber supply.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
Per usual, the basic MacBook Pro lags behind the flagships where it counts.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
Nvidia is probing whether Chinese intelligence targeted its CEO through an affair.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
6 pallets of hardware vanished en route to Texas, with no arrests 2 months later.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
Meta won't force Facebook page owners to allow AI training on linked content.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
Lawmakers want answers about Jensen Huang’s ties to an alleged Chinese intelligence asset.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
Google is technically offering schools more choice but not the choices anyone wants.
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External article · Ars Technica
BIG TECH
Tech industry in denial as US overwhelmingly votes to restrict AI, data centers.
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About Big Tech
Why these companies are different
A handful of technology firms operate at a scale that makes them closer to infrastructure than to ordinary businesses, and the reason is structural. Software costs a great deal to build and almost nothing to copy, so an additional customer is nearly pure margin. Many of these products also get more valuable as more people use them, whether through direct network effects, as with communication platforms, or indirectly, as with marketplaces where buyers attract sellers and the reverse. Those two properties together push these markets toward a small number of very large winners rather than many similar competitors, which is the fact underlying most of the beat.
The platform is also the referee
Much of the friction covered here comes from companies that both run a marketplace and compete inside it. An app store sets the terms, takes a share of transactions and also ships its own applications. A retail platform hosts independent sellers while selling its own products alongside them. A search engine ranks the web and also operates services appearing in those rankings. This dual role is the substance of most competition complaints, and regulators in different jurisdictions have taken meaningfully different approaches to it, which is why the same company can face incompatible obligations in different markets.
What the money actually comes from
Revenue in this sector is far more concentrated than product coverage implies. For several of these firms, advertising supplies the great majority of income while the best known consumer products generate little directly. For others, cloud computing sold to other businesses underwrites everything visible to consumers. This matters for reading the news: a change to advertising measurement or privacy rules can be more consequential than any product launch, and an outage in business infrastructure most people have never heard of can be the more significant story.
The chips and power underneath
The largest technology companies increasingly depend on physical constraints that software firms historically did not face. Advanced processors are designed by a handful of companies and manufactured by an even smaller number of foundries concentrated in a few locations, which turns semiconductor supply into a geopolitical question as much as a commercial one. Data centers consume electricity and water at industrial scale, so siting them involves local planning fights, grid capacity and utility negotiations. Export controls on chips, and the responses to them, connect this beat directly to international politics.